


Dark Roast

by velocity_times_2



Series: Better Than Espresso [2]
Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Race is a genius, Slow Burn, The New York City transit system is a sham, Winter, scientist race
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:20:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27254071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/velocity_times_2/pseuds/velocity_times_2
Summary: “Helping someone in a class I was good at,” Race tells Finch over the scream of the milk steamer, “is not a date.”“Sounds like a date,” Romeo offers as he hands off three Frappuccino cups to Race from his place at the register.“Everything sounds like a date to you.” Race snarls back, no true bite in his words.
Relationships: Albert DaSilva/Racetrack Higgins, David Jacobs/Jack Kelly, Kid Blink/Mush Meyers
Series: Better Than Espresso [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1315496
Comments: 8
Kudos: 34





	Dark Roast

**Author's Note:**

> Me? Writing the second work in a series I started 18 months ago? 
> 
> I promise it will not take me this long to write more for this. 
> 
> Probably

“Helping someone in a class I was good at,” Race tells Finch over the scream of the milk steamer, “is not a date.”

“Sounds like a date,” Romeo offers as he hands off three Frappuccino cups to Race from his place at the register.

“Everything sounds like a date to you.” Race snarls back, no true bite in his words.

Romeo scoffs and turns back to his line, while Race begins pumping syrups into the plastic cups. He could not, in any realm, fathom how a Frappuccino sounded good in the midst of early December rain, but middle school did weird things to people.

“Anyways,” he speaks to Finch again as the blenders roar to life, “he hasn’t even texted me. So. It may not happen at all.”

“You told him six, didn’t you?” Finch asks, tossing him the whipped cream canister as Race begins to pour. He nods in conformation.

“Then maybe he doesn’t think he has to text?”

Race shrugs back as Finch turns to pour out milk and hands the young girls their drinks. All three giggle and turn towards one another when Race gives them a small smile, and he doesn’t have the heart to point out the pride pin on his apron to them.

He gets it.

He also had crushes on unobtainable boys when he was young.

Crushes were simple. To see a cute guy and become gently infatuated and then move on. No romantic strings attached, no need to heartache or break. A perfect system, really. Race had had a lot of crushes.

Tarzan, then the red Power Ranger. One of the guys from One Direction because he’s a basic bitch. Jack, when he was fourteen. Which was probably his worst life decision, honestly. He’d had his fling with Spot senior year, but that had ended up in heartbreak, a broken mirror, and his foster parents kicking him back to the group home.

They’d apologized to one another. Spot had Hotshot now; Race sometimes saw the two.

But, it had been awhile – a long while – since Race had actually even considered someone romantically. He had declared a double major last spring and would end up having two minors because of the extra classes. His mentor, a shockingly young Japanese immigrant named Takashi, was already putting thesis ideas on the table. He was certain Race would end up becoming a particle physicist like him. Master’s degree, then PHD by twenty-eight.

There was no time for romance when your head was always swimming with theories and numbers and constants.

Not to mention the student loans he would have paid off by eighty.

Maybe.

Starbucks helped here and there. They shouldered some of the burden of tuition but not of books, or supplies, or lab coats and goggles and god forsaken broken beakers. So Race had to work and work, and then work more to make sure he could have a few hot meals a week.

Crutchie had said something about Disney starting a program to completely cover student costs for degrees and Race had considered moving to Florida just for the financial stability of it all.

Jack had then pointed out Race only smiled at people he liked, and that dream had flown out the window.

So here Racetrack was: poor and lonely and only getting any action from middle school girls.

Gross.

The store is swamped all afternoon, so much so that Race doesn’t get a smoke break until he clocks out. His hands are shaking, which he distantly acknowledges is not healthy, as he flicks his lighter and takes a deep drag in the back alley, the rain pattering on his worn through jacket.

His phone is still void of messages from any number he hasn’t already saved.

No Albert.

Finch could be right, he could be coming in store, thinking the time was already set in stone. He finishes his cigarette too quickly, sucking it down like a lifeline. He really only ever did that when he was stressed, and he tried to write it off as finals week kicking his ass, not nerves over an objectively cute boy wanting his tutoring help.

Because Albert was cute. Race had always noticed it when he came in, it was kind of impossible not to. He wasn’t _looking_ for something, though, so it had been an observation of analysis and not actual want. Noticing he was cute and had a memorable order, just two parts of Race’s job.

Finch would make fun of him if he went right back inside after smoking to look for Albert, so Race leans against the brick of the building and shivers while flicking through his phone until his fingertips numb through completely.

When they were so cold he could barely fumble through twitter (mostly pictures of Crutchie’s dog and Mush rambling about some new movie he’d fallen in love with), Race shouldered open the heavy back door and went back into the store’s stifling dry heat.

“Thought you left?” Jack asks, poking his head out of the back office and into the stock room and furrowing his brow. He checks his watch and scoffs. “You were done half an hour ago.”

“I think someone was gunna meet me,” Race leans in on the doorframe and peeks at the computer, emails on the screen and not the new schedule. He pouts. “Jackie, anyone ever tell you you’re beautiful?”

“No, you will not be getting Saturday morning off, Higgins.” Jack sighs out, “I need you to train a couple new kids on opening.”

“I thought having a manager best friend would work for me, not against.”

“Tough tamales.” Jack turns back to the paperwork mountain on the desk.

“Is that you trying to not curse?” Race taps his fingers on the door frame, trying to coax blood flow back into them.

“Davey has a kid brother who lives with him on the weeknights,” Jack shrugs and Race kicks the wheels of the chair. “He said fuck the other day and Dave almost butchered me for dinner instead of the dino nuggets.”

Race barks out a laugh and tosses his damp hair from his eyes.

“Damn you really did jump in the deep end into raising kids together, huh?” Race tries to picture Jack as an actual parent and not some off-beat starving artist uncle. Jack’s cheeks flush red and he kicks Racetrack’s shin in retaliation for the chair and that statement.

“We ain’t raising no kid. It’s more like… babysitting. I just can’t cuss in front of it!” Race just rolls his eyes and shoos Jack back to work without dignifying that with a response, knowing a solid relationship will be good for Jack. He tended to do exactly as Race had said, jump in feet first and fall in love, but from the times Race had seen him with David, he and the rest of their friend group and realized how in love David was with Jack, too. Puppy dog eyes, he swore.

The betting pool on how soon they were going to get married after graduation had started the first time Davey had come over for game night.

Behind their backs, of course.

Race isn’t sure why, when he goes into the main store and doesn’t see a head of bright red hair sitting at the corner table, his heart drops suddenly, but it does.

It’s the feeling of failure, he tells himself. Of offending someone and them saying it was fine when it wasn’t.

Absolutely not that Race had liked the sound of Albert’s voice, and the way his blue eyes seemed eager and bright when Race had said yes to helping. None of that.

“Did he text you?” Finch shocks Race by asking, and he shakes away his thousand-yard stare of their tiny store and grimaces at Finch.

“No, and obviously he’s a no show, so.” Race lifts a shoulder and adjusts his backpack on it. “I’m going to go study for biophysics and cry.” Finch blinks at him and Race rambles on to correct the mistake. “Because of biophysics. And because that teacher doesn’t curve. Not because of…” a date? Not a date. Crushed hopes? “This.”

“Uh huh.”

“I’m serious!”

Finch pats his head with an air of finality and goes back to work, leaving Race to walk out the front door and immediately light another cigarette for the walk home.

Albert was a punctual guy. He really was. He got to class early, even on mornings he stopped for coffee. He showed up for his internship right when he was expected. On movie nights he was always the one helping whoever was hosting get ready.

The New York City Public Transit, system, however, had a personal vendetta against his kind and all they held dear.

He had gone to office hours at campus for an hour in between his Starbucks run and Racetrack (which was an odd name but had quickly become the reason Al had always secretly liked the guy who remembered his order) helping him somehow pass Hoffman’s class. It should have been a fifteen-minute trip back to the block the Starbucks was on. Tops.

That would have put him there an hour ago, well within his punctuality window.

But no, there had to be an electrical malfunction that stranded Albert underground for eighty-three minutes now. If there was an option to climb out and risk his life with the sewer rats, he would have taken it. He’s pretty sure the mother with the screaming toddler at the other end of the car would, too.

The car was stuffed, the heat was blasting horrifically hot even in the winter cold, and everyone was cranky, sweating, and starting to turn ravenous. It was the point in a movie everyone would be smiling and sharing and singing. None of them were doing any such thing.

It would have been an interesting social experience to watch unfold, if Albert wasn’t so consumed with missing his one chance at possibly passing the hardest class he’d ever taken. It wasn’t even for his damn major, just some dumb requirement that was royally fucking him over backwards.

It was not his fault his brain understood words, not the laws of the universe.

To grind salt into an already bleeding wound that was his life, they were at a part of the railway were there was absolutely no cell signal. A total blackout zone between stations. He had tried to send three texts to the number Race had left on his cup but all three came back with the red exclamation point and a ding of _Unable to Deliver Message_.

He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to cry now, or scream.

Maybe the toddler was onto something, but Albert didn’t have a mom to hand him snacks and juice and tell him he’d be okay. He had a hovering D, a bottle of Tito’s that knew all his terrible secrets, and anger management issues.

And the world had dangled a lifeline – a hot one at that, Jesus Christ he wasn’t blind, okay? – and was now laughing itself sick at taking it away.

It was 8:04 when Albert finally managed to emerge from underground. He hadn’t even turned left to head to Starbucks at that point, defeat weighing his shoulders heavily. He had just circled right, crossed the street, and made for his attic apartment twelve blocks over.

Like hell he was getting on another metro car tonight.

It was three in the morning when Race’s phone buzzed three times on the corner of his desk. He’d been dozing on and off on one of his history textbooks, trying to shove dates into his brain for his final gen-ed exam ever for the last five hours. Crutchie had brought him a mug of hot chocolate before he went to bed and just patted Race’s back in solidarity.

Because of his illness, Crutchie had graduated high school early through home schooling and subsequently was already out of college and doing his masters in early childhood education while the rest of their group from the home struggled through their bachelor’s. Crutchie had one class and did mostly student teaching. So while they all complained about finals, papers, and professors, Crutchie was doing construction paper crafts at their kitchen table.

Race wanted to hate him for it, but really couldn’t. Crutchie was too pure of heart to hate.

The cocoa was half gone now, long since cooled and Race pushes it aside to get to his phone, squinting at the screen. The number is from his area code but not one he knew, or at least had saved in his phone.

3:03:37AM

_It’s me. I’m stuck on the C and have no idea when I’m getting off. Im so so so so so sorry._

3:03:52

_Oh. Shit. I mean Albert._

3:04:18

_The dirty chai guy you said you’d help with physics? We’ve been stuck for an hour._

The messages had just come through but Race’s muddled brain worked out that they probably had been meant to get to him nine hours ago. Which actually made him wake up fully, rubbing the gunk out of the corners of his eyes and stretching. Before he can get his full cognitive functions back online he types a response as if it was Romeo or Jack or Mush.

3:07:41

_Are you a mole person now?_

And then, because that probably wasn’t appropriate and this guy was probably asleep and had already forgotten about it all:

3:09:10

_I’m sorry you got stuck. If you still need help, lmk. The class was easy for me, but only because physics is the only thing my brain likes to make sense of. That and coffee orders. No hard feelings if you don’t wanna either._

There. An open offer. He’d let if be and if Albert responded in the morning, great. If he didn’t, Race would happily make him his coffee and move on with his life. No harm, no foul.

He decides it’s pointless to keep shoving dates into his brain this late, so Race tosses the phone onto the bed and stands to shower and brush his teeth. Whatever happens on his history final will happen. No sense killing his eyes trying to overachieve.

The shower relaxes him more than he’d like to admit and all he wants to do is live in the spray of hot water forever, but their gas bill had been way too high last month so two minutes is the max before he’s facing the cold air again. New York City was gorgeous and wonderful but no one who built anything here insulated buildings properly. Summers were sweltering and winters were icy, and getting out of the shower started a game of how quickly you could shove pajamas and fuzzy socks on before getting frostbite. He rushes through dressing and sprints on his tiptoes to his bed, diving under the duvet to fend off any chill from his dripping curls.

Race almost doesn’t look at his phone when he crawls back in bed, but it wakes up when he plugs it in and there, on the screen, is a notification.

3:11:35

_The moles rejected me. My eyesight isn’t bad enough to be accepted among their kind._

3:11:59

_But seriously? I need all the help I can get. Please?_

Race has to stifle his cackle in his pillow, not wanting to wake up Crutchie because he’s a good roommate, damnit. He saves Albert’s number, heart stumbling for a moment while he smiles at the joke again before replying.

3:12:40

_I do not discriminate against those with 20/20 vision. Tomorrow at 2 work?_

Albert’s bubble immediately begins typing, and Race feels another thump of his heart at knowing someone is right there, on the other end of this conversation, even so late in the night.

3:13:01

_I will walk and be there at 1:45_

Race falls asleep smiling into the pillow, worried at how sappy he seems to be getting over a damn tutoring session.

Romeo would not let him live it down, if he ever found out.

**Author's Note:**

> I like dumb boys who pine for one another, what can I say?
> 
> Tell me what you want to see in pt. 3? Because I can be easily swayed.
> 
> [Tumblr](velocitytimes2.tumblr.com)


End file.
